


Mirror, Mirror

by iberiandoctor (Jehane)



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Magic, Bondage, Choking, Clothes Being Cut Off, Crack Treated Seriously, Dark!Javert, Dark!Valjean, Knifeplay, M/M, Mirror Universe, Nonconned by Criminals, Post-martingale, Uniforms, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:48:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Javert is in mortal danger after the barricades and is in need of rescue. Fortunately, Valjean finds him. Unfortunately, it’s nothisValjean.
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 22
Kudos: 78





	1. The Wolf Inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nanosaurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanosaurus/gifts).



> Many content warnings, chief of which are: welcome to my id, which is clearly filled with sexy dark AUs and crack which I am taking far too seriously.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... the journey from self-punishment, to punishment by strangers, who might not in fact appear so strange after all.

It was past midnight, in the early hours of the final day of the 1832 June Insurrection. Inspector Javert stood upon the parapet of the Quai des Gesvres. 

Above him was a sky fully dark, filled with thick clouds that obscured the summer stars. Below him lay not the terrible waters of the Seine in full flood, but a formless abyss.

For the fifty-two years of his life, the Inspector had sought to carry out his duties within the strict confines of Authority and the Law, anchored upon the solid foundations of the world in which he lived. Now, on the brink of laying down those duties, he felt curiously, light-headedly overtaken by the bizarre sense that he had stood on this ledge before. It was mere fancy, of course; he would surely have remembered if he had come to this merciless river to tender his resignation from service. 

And yet, as he stood on this precipice, surrounded by the deafening noise of the water below, he was conscious of a loosening grip on the world around him. As he gazed into the void, what he saw, as if reflected by a dark, clouded mirror, was not his own face, but the shining face of Jean Valjean. 

Impossible, of course. Valjean was not here. Javert had inexplicably assisted him in some fool’s errand and had then left him at Rue de l’Homme-Armé without arresting him; he was no doubt making arrangements to take flight once again. But it was equally impossible that this infallible officer of the Law, who had made himself into granite before God, who had in all his long years of service to Authority never been touched, could suddenly discover that under his breastplate of bronze there was something resembling a heart.

Javert kept his eyes fixed on the gulf below. He did not spare a backward glance at the world he was leaving behind, at the lights from the distant houses, at the hat and cane he had placed at his feet. 

If he had done so, he would have noted, with some consternation, that the silent, deserted quay beyond him had suddenly become much less deserted.

Inspector Javert had tensed his muscles in preparation to take the plunge into the abyss when he felt himself seized from behind. 

Impossibly, he found himself plummeting through the air, backwards instead of forwards, as if his life had suddenly turned back to front. 

There was a cold moment of eternity, of time without end, as if reality itself was hovering on the edge of a complete rupture.

Then he landed. His head clashed on stone; all the breath was knocked from his body; white, blind brightness flashed like lightning before his eyes. But, before the streaks dissolved into a darkness that swallowed him whole, once again he beheld the shining, staring, intent face of Jean Valjean. 

*

Javert never dreamed, but he was surely dreaming now. 

He was surrounded by suffocating darkness, barely able to see save for intermittent glints of wavering brightness that lurked at the edges of his vision. His head swam. His body was shivering as if gripped by fever; he could barely move his arms. In his ears was the sound of ragged breathing, the panting of a caged animal.

And there was an unseasonal wet, almost sticky heat that surrounded him, that caught in his lungs, that made his skin prickle uncomfortably all over underneath his uniform, with an unsettling sensation that was completely unfamiliar.

In his dream, he was not alone. He could not see the man, but he could sense a presence hovering at the edge of his perception.

“You’re awake.” That resonant voice was strange, and also as familiar as Javert’s own heartbeat.

As Javert hesitated, the voice continued, “Your breathing is different when you are asleep, Inspector. Open your eyes.” 

Javert did, and found himself in a dimly-lit cavern. Stone stretched under his feet and away from him as far as the eye could see. He was hanging by his wrists, which were secured to something high above him, the metal cold against abrasions left by the martingale that had bound him in the tap-room at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, not a day before. He was barely strong enough to regain his footing, but try as he might, he did not have the strength to free his wrists from their bonds.

“That’s the spirit,” the voice said, encouragingly, and when Javert lifted his head, he looked into the familiar face of his benefactor and nemesis, Jean Valjean.

Backlit by the unreliable light of torches, Valjean too looked somehow both strange and familiar at once. He had exchanged the red-and-blue National Guard uniform that he’d affected at the Chanvrerie for a long black cloak and sober gentleman’s attire. 

In his right hand, he held a naked blade.

“I see you know me,” Valjean remarked, incongruously. He took a step forward. He looked strong and certain, a quiet confidence in his easy stance, as calm and resigned as he had seemed when Javert had left him not three hours ago on his doorstep at the Rue de l’Homme-Armé. But his eyes gleamed with some odd fervour that Javert did not recognise.

Javert shook his ringing head, trying to clear it. It had the opposite effect. Effortfully, he muttered, “What do you want, Valjean?”

“Ah, that is the question,” Valjean said thoughtfully. “I see you retain your ability to get to the heart of the matter.”

“You speak in riddles.” Nothing about this made any sense. Was this not the same man who had saved Javert from certain death and then professed he would surrender willingly to police custody? And had Javert not decided to walk away instead of arresting him, and chosen to make an ending at the river so that that man could go free? 

And how did Javert come to be here at all, chained in an underground cavern that resembled no place in Paris or indeed on Earth? Had he succeeded in destroying himself after all? Was he in Hell? And if so, how had it come to pass that Valjean was here with him?

Valjean took another step forward, standing close enough that Javert could feel the quiet huff of breath that issued from his lips. He tapped the blade to Javert’s cheek in the way that he had done at the barricades, when Javert had been sure he was about to slide that blade across Javert’s throat.

“Let me be plain, then. Which of these keys unlock the door to the inner library at the Prefecture of Police?”

Javert gaped at him. The world had clearly slid entirely free of its moorings. If this was not a dream, then surely this place must be Purgatory.

“These keys,” Valjean said, helpfully, and held up a familiar iron key-ring. Javert squinted at the small key to the door of his apartment, the larger one from the station-house at Rue de Pontoise, and the one that unlocked the manacles which he had once carried with him on his person into the field.

“What? To the _library_ …? None of them!”

“Are you certain?” Valjean drew the cold blade down Javert’s cheek to the top button of his great-coat, and almost casually flicked it away.

Javert could not believe this was occurring. Why would his dreams, or the demons of Purgatory, seek to torment him with Valjean — who stared intently into his face, whose purposes were completely inexplicable, even as he drew his knife still further down to nick away the buttons of Javert’s coat, one by one?

With some effort, he balled his hands into fists and hauled on his bonds, to no avail. “Let go of me!”

“But I went through all this trouble to bring you here,” Valjean remarked, almost gently. The liberated buttons collected on the stone beneath both their boots; the great-coat hung loose from Javert’s shoulders. Valjean took hold of Javert’s neck-stock with the hand that held the key-ring, and set the blade to the fastenings of Javert’s jacket.

Javert gasped. Valjean’s choking grip was like a vise, stopping the air in his throat, clenched against that sore place where the martingale’s rope had looped not the night before. He struggled to free the wrists held above his head, to twist his body from Valjean’s grasp, but Valjean held him fast against the bulk of his own body, pinning him in place between robust thighs as seemingly immoveable as pillars. Javert continued to fight as breath and strength drained slowly from him, and as Valjean began to slice his uniform open — starting with the jacket, scattering even more silver buttons that were each emblazoned with the coat-of-arms of the city, and then the close-fitting vest, and finally the starched cotton of his shirt. 

He could not look away from Valjean’s gaze even as it swam in and out of focus before his eyes. The thundering sound of his frantic pulse in his ears was deafening. As if from a great distance away, he felt the fabric of the pristine uniform, which he had worn so proudly for so many years, being slowly and meticulously cut from his body.

Finally, when the darkness threatened to overwhelm him, Valjean released his chokehold. The sudden relief was almost too much for Javert; he sagged against his bonds, drawing in desperate gulps of air.

As he panted for breath, Valjean reached down to unbuckle and remove his belt; then he paused, chuckling. “Well, Inspector, I see that some things haven’t changed. Your body rouses to discipline, as it always has, no matter which end of it you’re on.” He put the knife away in his sleeve, and blatantly palmed the front of Javert’s trousers.

Javert made a helpless sound. This bewildering statement could not be true. A devoted servant of the Law, he had always taken pains to keep himself immaculate and chaste; certainly, he would not be so depraved as to desire such maltreatment. But the reality of his body’s response could not be denied — the evidence of it was there in Valjean’s fingers as they cupped him through the cloth of his uniform. 

How could this be possible? And how had Valjean _known_ it? What had he meant by _Some things haven’t changed_? There was a peculiar light in Valjean’s eyes that seemed to convey he could see all of Javert’s closely-guarded secrets, even if Javert could not understand them himself. 

Javert could barely recognise his own voice. “Why are you doing this?” 

“Truthfully? To see if you would respond to me,” Valjean said. Which was, also, in itself, inexplicable — for Javert had never responded to Valjean in any way save with the bagne’s chastising authority and with rightful suspicion in Montreuil and then with the full weight of the Law thereafter. Certainly he had never once felt himself roused to Jean-le-Cric or Madeleine or Valjean, in the way he had roused so shamefully here in this unspeakable purgatory.

Valjean released Javert and took a step back. Javert suppressed a shudder: Valjean’s knife had exposed him from throat to navel, the flesh already sensitive and raw from the ropes of the martingale, and the close air of the cavern made him prickle all across his bare skin. 

“And also to give you an incentive to tell the truth. Which of the keys is it, Monsieur l’Inspecteur?”

Once again, Valjean held the key-ring up to eye level. Then he brought up his other hand, and abruptly pinched Javert on one bared nub of nipple. 

Javert heard himself cry out, felt his body wrench helplessly away in pain. Valjean made a vaguely comforting sound before he took hold of the other nipple, twisting it savagely. 

As the assault continued upon his undefended flesh, Javert knew he must have lost all hold on his sanity, if not upon existence itself. The Jean Valjean that had released him at the barricades would surely never have treated him so cruelly, or known how to touch him in this way, using his nails to dig welts into Javert’s vulnerable skin in a devilish way that somehow kept the fire stoked between his thighs. This must be a demon conjured from Javert’s fevered imaginings, stealing the face of this good man in order to torment Javert all the more.

“None of them, damn you! All of this is nonsense! Release me!”

Finally Valjean paused in his ministrations. Javert swayed on his feet, could feel the bruises darkening on his uncovered flesh. Even more shamefully, he knew his stiffness had not abated, and that he had somehow grown even harder than before. 

He watched as Valjean put the keys away, and then step in close once more, taking hold of his chin so he was forced to meet Valjean’s intent gaze.

“Well, Inspector, I know you aren’t a man who lies. Perhaps you truly don’t possess the access we seek. Then let me ask you something you must know. Where does André-Joseph Chabouillet now reside?”

At the name, Javert’s heart leaped into his mouth. André-Joseph Chabouillet, the former Secretary of the First Bureau of the Prefecture, who had served ten Prefects of Police in Paris. Javert’s former patron, the man who plucked him from obscurity at Toulon and gave him the position at Montreuil.

Valjean continued, “We know M. Chabouillet resigned from his post as Secretary and has sold his former residence at No. 2 cul-de-sac Sainte-Claude-Montmartre. But we have not been able to discern where he has moved to, or if he has left Paris altogether.”

This was even more inexplicable than the previous question. How did Valjean know these things, and what could he possibly want of the former Secretary? But Javert knew he would never betray his former patron, even if they were truly in Hell and if this demon version of Valjean were to continue this peculiar brand of torment.

“Even if I knew, I would never disclose it to you.”

“I thought you might say that,” Valjean sighed. He released his hold on Javert’s chin and walked around him with rapid strides, the knife flashing once more into his hand.

Javert tried to turn around, but the cuffs around his wrists had very little give to them. He felt Valjean loosen the stock and then run a possessive hand around his neck, fingering the welt which the martingale’s rope had abraded into the skin. 

“Ah, this is unexpected,” the man murmured in his ear. “Someone’s been playing with you when they shouldn’t?”

“The schoolboys at the barricade,” Javert said. The martingale had chafed him even more cruelly at the fork of his thighs, a place that was still covered for now. He added, “But you know this. You cut their ropes, you saved me.”

“I did? How very thoughtful of me,” Valjean mused. “Let’s see if I can make you more comfortable still, Inspector.”

Javert felt himself seized from behind. For many moments, there was the sound of a knife sawing steadily through good wool, and his own ragged breathing, before finally the greatcoat was rent through its back seam into two parts. The rest of Javert’s clothes followed, piece by slow piece.

When Javert’s back was laid as bare as his breast, Valjean stilled for a moment, presumably to admire his handiwork. Then he reached down, and suddenly a thick crack of agony thudded across his shoulders.

Was this demon Valjean performing this beating with Javert’s own belt? The indignity of it was unbearable. Javert groaned as the strokes continued to land unerringly, try as he might to twist away.

“I know you know, Inspector. Do not try to dissemble with us.” Valjean’s voice was steady, as if he could keep the punishment up indefinitely.

“I don’t,” Javert managed. He sounded drunken to his own ears, he found he could barely hold himself upright.

Valjean snorted softly. “You mean to tell me you are not aware of the whereabouts of your patron, the man you owe everything to?”

“It’s the truth,” Javert muttered blearily. “M. Chabouillet has long released me from his service. When he resigned, he handed my patronage to M. Gisquet. It was he who sent me out into the field again after you saved me.”

There was an electric pause, and then, abruptly, a second voice filled the cavern.

“Gisquet? That good-for-nothing coward?”

The ringing voice was familiar. Too familiar. The tall figure that strode impatiently out of the shadows to face him — it looked —

“— _No_ ,” Javert said, faintly. This was impossible. Monstrous. It could not be endured. He stared into a fearsome face: slanting brows, lips pulled back in a ferocious snarl.

Behind him, Valjean sighed. 

“My dear, did I not ask you not to intervene? I feared it would be too much for him. Look at him! You’ll see I’m right.”

“I am looking at him, and I disagree,” the newcomer said, impatiently. He slapped Javert’s face with one gloved palm. “Don’t you dare prove me wrong, Inspector.”

As the world tilted alarmingly around him, Javert could do nothing but stare in horrified disbelief at this terrible, terrifying mirror image of himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from [ST: Discovery’s Mirrorverse episode.](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-discovery-episode-11-review-the-wolf-inside/)


	2. Dark Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> … The journey from petty criminal to chairman of a vast money-laundering enterprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies for the hiatus from my id, and gratitude, as always, to my dear Miss M, for always sterling beta services <3

In 1802, in the sixth year of his incarceration in Toulon — the second year of the extended sentence meted out to him in payment for his first escape attempt — Jean-le-Cric’s chain-mate keeled over and dropped dead where he had been standing, working in the galleys alongside Jean on repairs to the battleship _Lenoire_.

Clément had not been well for months. He had had a cold which had developed into a wet, racking cough; over the last few nights Jean had felt him shivering with fever as they lay side by side on the narrow boards in the salle. He ought to have been taken to the hospital, but that would have interfered with the repair schedule of the galleys. 

Clément had started his five year sentence for forgery as a not-unattractive blond youth, but the abuse and deprivation in the bagne had taken a harsh toll on his looks. The guards didn’t spare his body more than a glance before they slung it into a sack and took it away. 

Jean’s new chain-mate was named Javert. He was as young as Clément had been, but the resemblance stopped there. Dark-haired, sullen when Clement had been garrulous, Javert’s sharp eyes flashed with hidden depths; though he was rail-thin, he was taller than Jean was. The bagne rumour was that his mother had been an unlicensed seer, the obstructing silver that laced his iron convict’s collar revealing he had some proficiency with magic. 

“Watch out for that one,” the others warned, but Jean didn’t much mind. He’d grown up around his sister’s hedge-magic in Faverolles and knew that, unlike the power of the courts and the abuse of the prisons, one man’s native ability was nothing to fear. 

Young Javert kept to himself at mealtimes and at night. He toiled silently in the yard alongside Jean. But in the spring, when the warship _Belle Etoile_ limped into Toulon’s harbour, bearing terrible battle scars that were still smoking red, Javert loosed a heartfelt curse. 

“British war magic. We need to stay clear until the guards put the fires out.”

Jean eyed his chain-mate with new respect. “The magic’s still live? You can see it?”

“Yes. This kind of spell will feed on the magic of others.” _Like mine,_ Javert didn’t need to say. Then he looked sidelong at Jean. “Actually, you have some talent yourself, though it’s nothing to write home about.”

“You can see that, too?” Jean had always wondered, though his sister had said the magic had passed him by.

Javert fingered his own silver-laced collar. “As I said, nothing to write home about. Why are you in here, Le Cric?”

Jean said, slowly, "I broke a window in my home town, and stole a loaf of bread." 

“Eight years for this?” Clearly Javert, too, had been listening to the bagne gossip. “It seems excessive.”

“Five years. They thought I was a poacher. I was armed when I broke the window. Then I tried to escape.” Jean remembered the two days of liberty, at least the liberty measured by terror of everything in the wider world: of passers-by, of horses, of food, of sleep, before the dogs and the seers came for him. 

Javert listened closely to Jean’s narration, and then commented, “Next time, to avoid the scryers, you need to cross three streams and conceal yourself in a structure lined with metal. But if you don’t have a good opportunity, it may be better not to escape at all.”

Jean had never heard anyone discuss their imprisonment so dispassionately before. “What are _you_ in here for?” he asked.

“I myself committed no crime. But my mother was a fortune teller, of a clan of unlicensed fortune tellers, which took me in after she died. The police finally caught up with us; they claimed unlicensed street magic was the source of all the crime in Hyères.” Javert shrugged. “Now the clan has passed on, and there is no longer a need to imprison the talented in Hyères, and so I was sent here to serve out the rest of my sentence as an adult.”

“I am sorry about your mother, and your family,” Jean ventured, and he was: he thought of Jeanne and the children for whom he had given up his liberty. Last year he heard Jeanne had made her way to Paris, where she had found work as a stitcher of books of magic at a printing office in the Rue du Sabot. There had been no report of the children.

Javert nodded, curtly. “I promised Sieur Thierry that when I get out of here, I will return to Hyères to see to our revenge.” Such bold talk was common in the bagne, but somehow Jean did not doubt the young man would achieve his goals.

“When I get out of here I will find Jeanne,” Jean said, surprising himself, and then was obliged to explain to his chain-mate about his sister and her little ones. 

Javert listened intently. “You have been hard done by,” he said, when Jean had finished, “and your family as well. They say society holds at bay two classes of people: those who attack it, and those who guard it. But I say that a society that preys on the weak does not deserve to be guarded. I committed no crime before my imprisonment, and the bagne has taught me all I need to know about being a criminal.” He frowned. “Everything, that is to say, but my letters; that, I had from Sieur Thierry.”

“Can one read in prison?” A humble tree pruner in Faverolles, Jean had never learned to read or write. 

“Supposedly there are libraries, and schools run by the occasional priest. I dislike reading, but Sieur Thierry said you need to do it to obtain power.” Javert eyed him thoughtfully. “In fact, if you wanted, we could find some books to read together.”

Jean was momentarily speechless. It was the first time in years that anyone had offered to do anything for him; even Clément, who had helped him escape the first time, had not dared show him any kindness. And now here was this fierce young man, whom he barely knew, yet who seemed unafraid of anything.

Their conversation was interrupted by the familiar shout of _“Get back to work!”_ But Jean was captivated. As the guards came down the ranks, whips at the ready, he said, sotto voce, to his chain-mate, “I think I would like that.”

*

In the weeks that passed, Javert was as good as his word. 

In stolen hours snatched from the grinding work at the galleys, Jean attended the small school run by the Ignorantin friars at Toulon, borrowed books from its library, and discovered the world of words and ideas. His new chain-mate joined him, and over that long summer, together they read about Lafayette and Blackstone and the English magician and philosopher John Uksglass, and discussed matters of justice and morals that Jean had not had the frame of reference to consider before. 

During his time in Toulon, what had lived within Jean’s soul was the general, formless sense that he had been unjustly treated by society for the small crime he had committed, and that the large and little abuses carried out by the guards were unfairly disproportionate to his infringements. But over these weeks and months, slowly Jean came to understand that he had been the victim of a much larger crime perpetrated by society against him. Before, he did not even have the language to articulate his rage, had guarded himself from everything, even his own emotions — but this was no longer so. Javert had been right: reading helped one better oneself, and was a necessary path to power.

It was a crime to attack society. But could a society that punished the downtrodden be considered just? And if society was wicked, wasn’t the act of attacking such a society in fact justified? Javert thought so: Sieur Thierry had told him that the weak were justified in arming themselves, in making themselves strong, so they could protect themselves against their oppressors. Jean himself was not so certain, and this was a topic of debate between them.

The issue of magic was also as hotly discussed in books as well as their discussions, much as gunpowder and cannons and other means of modern warfare. Uksglass wrote at some length about magical warfare, which the Emperor and the British king both sought to deploy against each other, and to harness for the exclusive use of France and England respectively. 

Was it fair to seek control over the talented for the good of the country, to imprison and beat the talent out of those who turned to crime? The academics argued against it. To them, magic was at best a neutral force — neither evil nor good, but a weapon in the hands of a good or an evil man. 

Before he embarked on his studies, Jean-le-Cric had learned nothing from the bagne save suffering. He was an unlettered man, transformed by the condemnation of a brutal, merciless society into nothing more than a wild beast, convinced only that life was a war, and that in that war he was the conquered. He had no weapon other than his hate, and he had resolved to bear it away with him when he escaped from prison. But now, he put on knowledge as a means and a weapon with which to arm himself.

In the winter, he obtained another weapon.

*

His chain-mate was not much for conversation when working in the yard, but Javert was constantly observing him all the same. Jean was uncommonly strong; at work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan, he was worth four men. He could climb a vertical surface by finding points of support where hardly a projection was visible. Once, in the early days of summer, carrying his demi-chaine, he managed to raise himself as if by magic to the third story of the galley prison, sensing Javert’s watchful regard all the way down.

“You are one in ten thousand, one in a hundred thousand,” Javert whispered to him as they lay down next to each other in the salle that night, as they always did. In the darkness, Jean could see the whites of Javert’s eyes, the gleam of his teeth. “Perhaps you, too, have obtained what you need to in order to be a criminal. When you get out of here — when _we_ get out of here —” 

Javert did not finish the sentence; he turned away, as if in avoidance of what was in his heart.

Jean could see the guards kept their own eye out for Javert. He learned that torture and sex and pain could be their own kind of power, and while Javert was held helpless by the silver runes in his collar, the men who ruled over Toulon could do what they liked to him. They beat him bloody for the most minor infractions; there were days when they took him aside, as they took aside the prisoners far more comely and compliant than Javert, and when they returned him after roll call Jean could see the would-be magician having difficulty walking. 

“Are you all right?” Jean asked him, the first time it happened. Javert nodded, but his eyes were despondent in a way that made Jean’s heart ache with helpless fury. It was the first time in his years in Toulon that he felt roused to pity for someone other than himself, though he knew there was nothing that could be done, now he understood that a successful escape was not possible.

Then came the day when everything changed.

As winter approached there was a lull in the work at the shipyard; neither sides’ soldiers nor their magicians wished to wage a bitter, unseasonal campaign. The prisoners were tasked to assist with the maintenance of the public buildings in the town of Toulon. 

Brevet, who has cultivated the favour of the chaplains and had the reputation as the chaine’s turnkey, had lately begun to take Javert to task over the latter’s unsavoury connections with magic. His large compatriot, the peasant Cochepaille from the Pyrenees, a prisoner for life, was happy to carry out his orders. Of course Jean Valjean’s presence at Javert’s side represented a degree of discouragement, but when Jean was assigned to repairs elsewhere in the city, the ruffians took their chance. 

When Jean first heard the shouting, he ignored the commotion. But when his guards went off to investigate, Jean followed, and they all discovered that the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon had somehow given way. All had managed to get clear save for Javert; his leg was pinned under one of the boulders, and when Jean arrived he was only barely clinging to consciousness. 

Jean did not stop to consider if he had sufficient strength. He pushed the ineffectual rescuers out of the way, and with an enormous feat, raised the rubble onto his shoulders until Javert could be dragged clear. Then he lifted the injured man into his arms, bore him to the bagne’s infirmary, and refused to be parted from him throughout the afternoon of makeshift surgery involving the stretching and setting of muscle and bones, and the night of drugged sleep that followed. 

Eventually the kindly physician gave the order for the chain-mates to be chained together once more, and left them alone. 

“I will pay Cochepaille back, if it’s the last thing I do,” Javert muttered, when he woke with the dawn. “And Brevet, too, though now might be too dangerous; we might have to wait until later.” 

“You focus on getting well,” Jean told him. Relief and rage were making him equally light-headed. “I will see to them. I will see that no one ever harms you again.” 

Javert took a deep breath. He was far from a small man, but in this spartan infirmary bed he seemed very vulnerable, his right wrist chained to the bedframe, sallow skin almost the same pallor as the sheets. Jean wanted to tear out the throat of every guard and every prisoner who had ever put their hands on him. 

He reached for Javert’s free hand. Javert clasped back, saying grimly, “Very well. I owe you my life. Where I come from, this means I belong to you until I can pay my debts. Tell me what you want me to do.”

Jean was at a loss for words. The idea of anyone — of _Javert_ — enslaving himself to him seemed like madness; it seemed unfair for one person to own another. He protested, “I don’t want you in my debt. I don’t want you to belong to me.”

Javert smiled at this. It was a smile of happiness that Jean had never seen him wear; it lit up his sullen face, despite the lines of pain.

“But what if it’s what I want?” he asked softly. He loosed Jean’s hand, took hold of Jean’s chin and pulled him downwards to press a kiss to his lips.

Never since Jean’s infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he encountered any affection; in Faverolles, struggling to survive, he had not had a kindly woman friend. Here in Toulon, men had only touched him to bruise him, and while thanks to his size and strength he had been spared the terrible abuses that had been even worse than blows, he knew that others had not been so fortunate. Javert had himself not been so fortunate. Surely Javert could not desire intimacies which had been stolen or beaten from him by the guards?

And yet, there could be no mistaking Javert’s embrace for anything other than a comfort and a welcome. Jean found himself returning Javert’s kisses gladly, found himself rousing for the first time in his life with another. Fumbling, insistent, these two hardened criminals, these two unlikely lovers, found their way to pleasure, chained together in the prison infirmary and to this makeshift connubial bed. 

Afterwards, Jean rested his sweating forehead against Javert’s. His heart was pounding. He was aware something was awakening under his breast-bone, something fierce and blazing, furious enough to raze the bagne of Toulon to its very foundations.

“You can say what you like, but it’s only half the truth,” he told his chain-mate. “If you belong to me, I belong just as much to you.”

*

They were allowed two days together in the infirmary before Javert was deemed well enough to return to the prison salle. Though the laudanum only took the surfaces off Javert’s pain and it was painful to Jean to watch his friend suffer, their new bond was itself almost like a drug, which they both soon learned to guard jealously, as nothing that either of them had known before.

The break to Javert’s right leg took all winter to heal. The ankle was never entirely right afterwards, despite Jean’s painstaking care. When Javert was on his feet again, Brevet and the guards left him alone, possibly out of a fear of retribution. Jean had wanted revenge, of course, but Javert persuaded him to do nothing to jeopardise his impending release. 

Without regrets, Jean Valjean set aside his plans for escape. In any case, there was no question of him fleeing this place without Javert, and his chain-mate would be hampered by his bad leg.

As spring thaws brought warships into the galleys once again, and Jean devoured modern accounts of the industrial revolution alongside with the classics, he slowly grew to understand the weapon that he had fashioned. Working at Javert’s side in the galleys, both of them guarding each other’s backs, they stole intimate moments when the guards’ watchful gazes were turned, and then discreetly comforted themselves in each other’s arms in the salle at night. 

Torture and magic and authority might be powerful armaments in the war that was this life, but nothing was as powerful as love.

“Although we will need power when we get out of here, and money, too,” Javert would murmur, as the year rolled to an end and their release date drew closer. “Companionship is all very well, but we need a plan if we are to have our revenge.”

“I have everything important right here,” Jean replied, winding his arms around Javert. In this last year before their release, they had graduated permanently to the demi-chaine, but Jean still enjoyed the physical closeness even though the shackles no longer bound them closely together.

Javert snorted, but he didn’t disagree. “We can have this, and everything else as well,” he said grimly, as if to himself.

*

It was a bold statement, but they managed in 1804, just as Javert had vowed: their freedom, their power, their revenge. 

Javert’s sentence for abetment was spent in February. He accepted his yellow papers and the silver brand on his shoulder that would impede his talent, and he kissed Jean for long enough to warm the nights they would spend apart. 

When April arrived, though, Javert did not come for him as they had initially agreed. Jean collected his meagre pay and packed his few belongings, trying not to worry. 

“Aw, the magician brat’s forgotten about you,” Cochepaille sneered, and Jean smashed him to the ground and knocked out his front teeth — a last act of violence from Jean-le-Cric in Toulon, before he left it forever.

If Javert had not come, it meant things in Hyères had not gone to plan. Resolutely, Jean shouldered his burdens and headed for Paris. The city was forbidden for convicts on parole, but this was the last place from which he had received word of his sister.

It took him almost five weeks to make the two hundred mile journey; it was May when at last Jean staggered into the outskirts of the city. He had taken as direct a route as he could, sleeping in fields and forests, only venturing into the villages when he ran out of food and was unable to trap game, where he practised his prison-honed knack of stealing old clothes and bread, and, in the village of Digne, an old poacher’s gun of the sort he had used to arm himself in Faverolles. 

Paris was large and sprawling and full of traffic and commerce and noise. Jean had come to the end of his journeying and his strength; he settled himself in a bench beside the gutter, and was only roused out of his stupor by an acerbic, familiar voice.

“Thought you’d make better time without a cripple to slow you down! I expected you here five days ago.”

Jean looked up into that beloved face. Javert was dressed as a gentleman, hair tied back in an old-fashioned queue. He leaned heavily on a silver-topped cane, neat whiskers almost hiding a new scar across his cheek. 

“I’ve missed you,” Javert said, and opened his arms for Jean’s embrace.

They went to ground in one of Paris’ many anonymous banlieues, in a room rented under an assumed name, and Jean learned what had befallen Javert in Hyères. 

Javert had managed to find the remnants of his clan, who had gone to ground in the city. Those secret magicians dug the silver out of his arm, and together they lay a trap for the inspector who had been the downfall of the clan and Javert’s Sieur Thierry. The inspector had struck back with the power of the magical armoury he had confiscated over the years, and the resulting magical battle had wrecked the station-house and triggered an explosion that killed not only the inspector but all the troops and servants stationed there. Javert had barely escaped with his life; his comrades had not been so lucky.

“I switched my coat and papers with one the bodies. Hopefully the Emperor’s investigators will discover the corruption in the Hyères inspectorate and be minded to close the matter quickly.” Javert’s tone was full of bravado, but Jean had to hold him until his trembling stopped. 

“It was an accident, Javert.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Javert said resolutely. “I meant to kill him, and I was glad I did.”

Jean didn’t gainsay this, because he discovered he was glad as well. The loss of life was regrettable, but the policemen in Hyères had signed themselves over to a corrupt society that profiteered from the weak, and Jean would not waste regret over any outcome that had returned Javert to him alive and well.

Delving through Paris’s teeming hundreds of thousands of souls, metal all around them, was beyond Javert’s talents. Using all their Hyères money to pay an official scryer, they finally managed to track down Jean’s sister. They arrived just in time. 

The two oldest children had died in Faverolles, the third, when they had reached Paris. Jeanne had just been delivered of her last child, sired on her by her former employer, who had threatened to turn her in to the authorities as an unlicensed hedge witch if she did not agree to warm his bed.

After Jean wept himself dry in her lap, as he listened to her words of forgiveness, he felt a consuming rage seize hold of him, a terrible desire for revenge. It was stronger than his helpless fury over his arrest, over his incarceration, over the harm done to Javert. 

This time, though, he had the power to turn it into a weapon.

With Javert at his side, Jean Valjean broke into the man’s house and took him captive. They took turns brutalising him until he disclosed where he had hidden the baby and the keys to his safe. Then they emptied the safe of all its silver and set fire to the printing presses and inventory, save for the most powerful books which Javert concealed in his satchel. They let the baby’s wet-nurse live, but they left the printer to burn with his ill-gotten business.

In the flames, Valjean saw the last of his own youth and innocence crumble into ashes; he felt himself reborn. 

They left Paris while it was still dark, and while the huge fire at the Rue du Sabot was distracting the gendarmerie, under cover of Javert’s secretive magics. Valjean bought a horse and trap for Jeanne and the baby and the four small ones in Saint-Denis, and they drove north, toward Brie, and Faverolles.

They crossed more than three streams, drove far into the night, eventually taking shelter under the iron-buttressed structure of the Gothic cathedral in Meaux. The next day, when it seemed pursuit was not in the offing, they paid for two rooms at an inn. After little Antoine and Étienne fell asleep, Javert put his head on Valjean’s shoulder and started to laugh.

“What is it?”

“Before Toulon, I would never have seen myself fleeing from the law with my lover, his sister and her five small children! Or believed that I could ever feel this powerful.”

Valjean drew his man close, feeling an unfamiliar heat under Javert’s skin. “You’ve been reading the books we secured from the printers. They were useful?”

“Very. But even more useful was the man’s pain. It made me feel as if I could pull down the walls of the Palais de Justice. It was like this in Hyères as well.” Javert snorted softly. “The Emperor should forget about building those military magic academies, and enslave for himself a troop of unlicensed magicians who’d feed off the enemy’s pain. With us fighting his wars for him instead, France would be unstoppable.”

Valjean thought about what it would take to make Javert and Jeanne and himself unstoppable. “We should not set out to enslave anyone, or to harm the innocent,” he mused. “We might be fugitives from justice, but if we have no standards at all we’d be no better than the Emperor and his soldiers.” 

Javert said, very quietly, “You know they’ll kill us all if they catch us, even the children.” 

“Then we’ll just have to make sure they don’t catch us,” Valjean said.

*

They didn’t stay in Faverolles, in the end. There was nothing for them there but gravestones. Instead, they found their way further north towards the coast, to a small town called Montreuil-sur-Mer. 

There, it was no large task for a magician to start a small fire in the unguarded town-hall. 

A tall, strongly-built man who had been passing by the town with his family rushed into the flames and saved, at the risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the gendarmerie. By the time the fire was extinguished and words of gratitude were exchanged, Montreuil’s officials only barely glanced at the family’s papers before welcoming them to the town.

Investments were always welcome in a village which had seen better days, populated by old men who had not been carried off to the capital or to fight in France’s wars. The newcomer called himself Madeleine; he had some modest capital to apply to revitalise Montreuil’s old industry in “black goods”. By devising a resin substitute in the manufacturing process, he prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, and managed to sell the goods at a lower price while trebling the profit margin.

Montreuil’s young women flocked to Madeleine’s jet factory, which his sister ruled with an iron fist. Madeleine founded a hospital and a school, and his charitable works persuaded the town’s grand old families to do likewise. When the older Laffitte brother passed on in his sleep, the younger brother asked the jet magnate if he would become a small shareholder in the district’s bank. 

In the meantime, a dark figure prowled Montreuil’s seamier streets, a shadow to Madeleine’s undeniably respectable sun. Those who were willing to pledge loyalty, who did not prey on the poor and needy, were allowed to persist in their petty crimes. Those who did not comply found themselves in custody at the lock-up in Inspector Eugène‘s station-house, but not after they had been tortured and beaten until they could barely remember their own names, let alone the identity of their assailant.

The young Madeleine children grew like weeds and thrived. If some of them spent more time with their uncle’s books than out in the fields — if Antoine took to accompanying Madeleine’s secretary, the dour man who called himself Vidocq, on his frequent trips out of Montreuil, returning with jewellery for his mothers and sisters and strange devices of power which he would hide in his room — the villagers were not much ones to gossip, not when Madeleine was so well-liked in the town and on such good terms with its mayor and bankers and business leaders. 

In the privacy of their bedchamber and the grotto they built beneath the Madeleine residence, Valjean and Javert were free to indulge in the venal acts afforded by their covering of respectability. Physical pain enhanced Javert’s power and carnal pleasure for the both of them; egalitarian in this, as in everything, they took scrupulous turns laying bruises and lashing welts into one another’s flesh and then covering the injuries with kisses. Over the years Javert sought to augment his talent with runes, sewn and branded into his skin in gold and rare Spanish platinum; he enlisted Valjean’s help to brand the largest one across his back, and Valjean did so with especial care, laying the silver knife against the old scars left by Toulon’s lash.

“Am I hurting you?” he would always ask, and Javert would grin fiercely and tell him, “Yes. Don’t stop.” 

*

In the summer of 1818, a young woman came to the factory looking for work. Jeanne said her name was Fantine Thibault; she had left Montreuil for Paris some time ago and had only recently returned. She settled into the factory routine readily enough, but as the months wore on Jeanne noticed the girl growing paler and more withdrawn.

“I have the sense she has some family trouble, back in Paris,” Jeanne reported over dinner one night in autumn. Her hedge magic had grown even blunter over the years, but it had never once steered them wrongly.

“Anything that can pose a risk to us?” Javert asked, sharply. Never calm at the best of times, his fiercely loyal guard dog was even more easily riled up these days. Valjean’s strategy had been for their enterprise to keep to a low profile within their small coastal stronghold, to steer clear of war and politics that were constantly brewing in the capital, but, under the Bourbon Restoration, the ultra-royalists in Paris were starting to agitate for the restoration of power to the Church and even more conservative measures against magicians, calls that were starting to be heard here in the north.

Valjean considered this. “Why don’t you go take a look yourself tomorrow?” he asked, and Javert nodded in agreement. 

The next morning, Valjean observed the scene from his window. The young women walked up the narrow stone path to the factory, Jeanne standing at the door to let them in, Javert approaching from the other direction with his long cloak and cane. He moved to position himself beside Jeanne on the threshold, and then, as the girls streamed past them, without warning, Fantine and Javert both cried out and collapsed on the stones.

Valjean leaped to his feet, and descended the stairs two at a time.

When he arrived on scene, the foremen had managed to wrestle Javert into a chair in a side room. Fantine lay huddled on a bench by the window, with Jeanne tending to her. 

“What in the world —?”

“Well might you ask that,” Javert muttered crossly. He waved an unsteady hand in Fantine’s general direction. “I went to take a look like you asked — it wasn’t even a difficult spell! — and it was as if another world had opened up. A world where you and I are mortal enemies and fight to our deaths, where this woman gives up her child and sells herself and dies because her cad of a lover abandons her and the baby in Paris. I don’t even know how real any of it is. I am utterly useless as a scryer, you ought to dismiss me from your service.”

“It’s real,” Fantine whispered from her corner of the room. She clung to Jeanne’s arm as if it were a lifeline. “I did leave Cosette with the innkeepers, though I’m going to get her back when I pay off my debts here. And Felix did abandon us. He’s probably back in Paris by now, having a whale of a time with some fancy lady or other.” 

Valjean gripped Javert’s shoulder. The young woman’s story made him predictably furious, but he knew Javert would advise caution. Certainly they could not both afford to rush off to Paris to look for this Felix of hers without understanding exactly what dangers were involved. 

Here, however, his companion surprised him. “In that case,” Javert said, grimly, “I think we’d better look into this _other world_ business before it comes looking for us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Lancet, 1843](https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=F_sBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA621&lpg=PA621&dq=toulon+bagne+various+fatal+illnesses&source=bl&ots=G3EooFzx6X&sig=ACfU3U3s3E3PSAJcJswr-vVDWb806htXOw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0p9j0iMnpAhVtwTgGHRfvDR4Q6AEwA3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=toulon%20bagne%20various%20fatal%20illnesses&f=false).  
> 19th century treatment for broken bones.  
> [Uses of metal in cathedral construction](https://www.abelard.org/france/using-metal-in-cathedral-construction.php).

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this scene](https://vimeo.com/153963013), and several conversations with Nanosaurus. Beta by Miss M <3
> 
> Title, obviously, from the Star Trek [Evil Goateed Universe episode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror,_Mirror_\(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series\)) that started it all.


End file.
